HE'S GOING, GOING TOTALLY GONE: OR, ADDICTED TO THE DIAMOND GAME

How pathetic is this? An open Friday night, on vacation, and what does it entail?

A hot date. A date. Dinner with friends. Dinner alone. Watching TV alone. All right, getting home (actually the 'rents', who I'm visiting) and tearing upstairs to log on to CBS Sportsline (everyone else, the parents, sister and her fiancé had sat down to watch a movie) to check on the score in a nothing game for the Blue Jays against the damn Devil Rays at the tailend of another forgettable season for the Toronto diamond concern.

Teeth-gnashing to see that the score had been 3-0 before the home team rallied with a run in the seventh and two more in the ninth to take it to extra innings. Oh, wait, the Jays are back from their road trip -- they came back. Still, it means no 17th win for Roy Halladay. Grrrr.

Then B.J. Ryan wild-pitches in the go-ahead run in Tampa's half of the 10th, putting the D-Rays in position for, wait for it, just their third road win since July 1. (There are CFL teams that have three road wins since July 1, for pity's sake.)

However, in the bottom of the 10th, Aaron Hill completes a 4-for-4 night with a walk-off two-run homer off Brian Meadows to give the Jays a 5-4 win, thus restoring the natural order of the world, keeping it from spinning a fraction of a degree of its axis and causing tidal waves on the other side of the world.

Which is to say that thanks (or should that be no thanks?) to The Geek, yours truly is a made member of the sports mob, a total goner from the words, "Play ball!" Family time could wait, since oh-so-much was riding on the outcome of the Rays and Jays. It was right about then that yours truly realized what was lacking in that otherwise excellent book Addicted that I just finished reading early Friday morning.

As riveting as it was to hear well-known wordsmiths (David Adams Richards, Sheri-D Wilson, Peter Gzowski, to name a few) speak of their various addictions, the book didn't have a contribution from a hopeless sports addict. Granted, being a hopeless sports addict is nowhere near as ruinous as drugs or booze, especially you don't do the fantasy-league things or place bets on the games.

No matter. When a good portion of your point of view toward the world hinges on how the Blue Jays make out, in a nothing game in the middle of September against a last-place team, you have some serious issues.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.